Creative and arts-based methods

The delivery of evidence-based, cost-effective, and humane health and social care is usually fraught with challenges. The uncertainty about diagnoses and therapies or technologies, the necessary interaction between professionals from multiple disciplines, and the hurdles for patients, relatives, and citizens to be enabled to exercise power and express their preferences and values, are some of the factors contributing to these challenges. An emphasis on biomedical, rationalist perspectives in research has recently been robustly challenged by the increasing use of creative methods, which embrace emotional, empathic, and artistic approaches to facilitate the co-development and co-creation of knowledge and a shared understanding between researchers, participants, clinicians, patients, and citizens. The chapter offers insights on some creative and arts-based methodologies, exploring their application in key contemporary global issues such as drug-resistant infections and threats to planetary wellbeing, while reflecting on the development of a range of creative objects, from serious games to theatre plays, or collages. The chapter also showcases other arts-based experiences to reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of creative methodologies to address interdisciplinarity, highlighting some frictions as well as the mutual benefits of embracing the humanities within the health world.